Andi cursed, silently to herself. She’d known better, but the whole baby discussion with Miranda had blown that out of her mind as effectively as a Hellfire missile.

  She offered a half bow as if taking a curtain call. This was who she was and Mother would finally have to take or leave that.

  6

  “No, don’t!” Taz called out.

  “What? Why?” All Jeremy had done was call Clarissa Reece, the Director of the CIA. “We’re in southern Quebec. The sabotaged Embraer is therefore outside of direct FBI jurisdiction. The CIA covers international problems.”

  “But calling her direct?”

  Jeremy shrugged as the ringing tone continued. “How many hours fighting our way through their bureaucracy do you want to do?”

  “Christ! They are worse than the Pentagon. But—”

  “Clarissa here. What do you want, Jeremy?” Sounded in his right ear as Taz spoke in the left.

  “—I so hate that bitch.”

  “Tell her the feeling is mutual,” Clarissa spoke without missing a beat.

  “She says the feeling is mutual.”

  Taz’s eye roll said that he probably shouldn’t have repeated that part.

  Clarissa’s laugh agreed with Taz.

  Jeremy explained the situation.

  “Give me one reason why I should care. Let the Mounties and the Boston cops deal with it.”

  “Ernie Maxwell.”

  Stone silence over the phone and Taz squinted at him.

  “What about him?”

  “Isn’t he the CIA Director of the Middle East Desk that you—”

  “I know who the hell he is, Jeremy. What about him?”

  “He was on the flight and is now in critical condition in a Montreal hospital.”

  “Which seat?” Taz whispered.

  “2A.”

  And Taz sprinted into the plane.

  “No, he said he was headed to Atlanta.” Clarissa shouted at someone in the background demanding clarification from someone on Maxwell’s whereabouts. He tipped his head to try and get some water out of his ear. It didn’t work, but he became acutely aware of gritty sand under his collar—now sliding down his back. He tried to pull the sodden shirttail out before the sand was routed into his underwear, but his clothes were all so wet that all he did was give himself a wedgie.

  “Shit!” Clarissa’s curse confirmed that it was the right Ernie Maxwell at the same moment Taz returned. She was holding one half of a seatbelt, actually a quarter of one as she’d undone the buckle. Actually, three seatbelts.

  “Strap cut most of the way through. Ernie,” she held up one of the severed ends. The break was clean except for the few outer threads which had torn. Then she held up the other two. “And the two body bags.”

  “Director Ernie Maxwell did have his seatbelt buckled.” Jeremy fingered the edge of all three. Cut, then brushed lightly with a flame source, perhaps a lighter. It showed none of the inevitable fraying of cut polyester that might have been noticed. Yet the slice’s unevenness said it was done fast. Still, it had proven sufficient to the task. “But someone cut it. Planned ahead of time, sealed with a lighter. Knew which seat he’d be in,” he told Clarissa.

  Taz spoke up. “Someone wanted to make sure he didn’t survive the crash, just in case sabotaging the plane wasn’t enough.”

  “Who were the other two?” Clarissa asked.

  Jeremy pulled up the seat manifest and read off the names.

  “Nope! Not mine. Maybe someone cut their belts to distract attention from Ernie.”

  “Or perhaps they were unsure of his seat, so they cut the three most likely.” Taz always saw variations that he missed. She grabbed the phone and set it to speaker. “Good man or bad man?”

  “Ernie? Good,” Clarissa didn’t even pause before answering.

  Taz grunted. “Now I just have to decide if your definition of good matches mine.”

  Clarissa snorted but didn’t argue. Maybe she’d already lost too many arguments with Taz in the past.

  7

  Clarissa hung up the phone and turned her chair to her office window on the top floor of the Original Headquarters Building.

  Facing east along the Potomac, she wasn’t gazing longingly toward downtown DC. Not anymore. Her political ambitions there had been crushed. One too many scandals—a few with hard evidence—wouldn’t let her survive the press deep-diving her past as part of a political campaign. It was a point that President Roy Cole and the standing members of the House Intelligence Committee had made painfully clear.

  She had enough dirt on the latter that they wouldn’t move against her, but the quid pro quo they’d made crystalline clear: If we go down, you go down. The only thing that had saved their careers.

  It was more than a little galling that Rose, her one friend—who had planned to run as her future VP—would make it to the White House without her. Not as an elected official, but as President Roy Cole’s fiancé.

  Rose and Roy had been completely transparent about their courtship, other than how soon after her husband’s murder it had begun. The ex-Mrs. Senator Hunter Ramson’s engagement last night was dominating this morning’s news cycle—and America was eating it up. The widowed President finding true love halfway into his second term, and the reigning First Lady of DC’s social scene becoming First Lady in title as well. Nobody seemed to be missing Senator Hunter Ramson at all, least of all Rose.

  The news cycle timing worked well; it would bury the crash of the Embraer in Montreal to a mere a footnote. That would buy her time to figure out what the hell happened and why Ernie had lied to her about his itinerary.

  No, she wasn’t looking out her window toward DC. The three branches of government—legislative, judicial, and executive—were closed to her. Her fortieth birthday next month and she’d already reached as high as she would ever climb. However, expanding the power of the CIA, as it should be to protect all of those crappy little voter’s way of life, would serve as ambition enough.

  So, the distant glimpse of DC from CIA headquarters no longer drew her as it had when she’d married D/CIA Clark Winston and groomed him for the President’s chair. Damn the bastard for getting himself killed.

  Let it go, Clarissa. No matter how many times Rose gave her that advice, it had remained a fiery ball in her gut.

  Enough of that shit. She was so done with the self-pity party.

  As if her vision had cleared, Clarissa now gazed beyond the horizon—toward the Middle East, a third of the way around the globe. Out there, where the world feared the reach and power of the CIA, lay the future.

  With Ernie in place, her attention had drifted. She’d focused west on China’s final descent into demographic hell, doubly reinforced by a brutally authoritarian dictatorship. She’d be surprised if they lasted the decade. And east on that micro-penile ruler of Russia who could only jack himself off with war crimes and missile barrages.

  And yet… Why was the Middle East always such a pain in the ass?

  Ernie Maxwell in intensive care? Couldn’t she catch a break?

  His Assistant Director of the Middle East Desk lacked nothing in brains to run the desk effectively in her boss’ absence, but she had no field experience. She’d risen through the bureaucratic side of the Agency, and Clarissa would have to vet her every choice.

  Cutthroat enough to erase her boss to get the job? No, it didn’t fit. He’d only recently elevated Marwa Samir to the position; it was too soon for such a move on her part. She also didn’t seem the type—though Clarissa knew that they were the ones who needed the closest watching.

  Someone had targeted Ernie specifically. Probably from outside the agency.

  Who? And why?

  Clarissa’s history with him traced all of the way back to the torture black sites of the Afghanistan War. They’d processed plenty of Taliban and al-Qaeda through there together. Neither of them lacked for enemies.

  If that was the connection, was she the next target?

  But he’d also worked undercover in Syria, the American Embassy in Russia, and the Diego Garcia Black Site before she’d offered him the Middle East Desk. That island in the middle of the Indian Ocean was only the second time their careers had overlapped, but he’d done what was needed without hesitation.

  There was that one escapee from Diego Garcia who remained at large: Paolo Ortiz, the self-proclaimed Latin Wonder. The other two escapees had been tracked and erased by the CIA’s Special Operations Group—too dangerous to recapture and lock up again. It had also precluded any embarrassing explanations to Interpol.

  Had Paolo resurfaced after two years to target Ernie Maxwell? She couldn’t imagine how the man would know of Ernie’s existence, much less care. Paolo’s specialty was South and Central American coups—for a price. She’d tried to see if he was a part of the latest debacle in Peru but, if so, he’d kept an atypically low profile.

  Yet someone had tracked Ernie on a flight from Boston to Montreal.

  Boston to Montreal?

  Why the hell would the Director of the Middle East Desk go to either one? And why had he lied about it?

  She spun back to her computer and pulled up Ernie’s bio. No travel to either recorded in his past. Montreal was not a hotbed of international intelligence cooperation. The CSIS, Canadian Security Intelligence Service, was based in Ottawa, which could be reached from DC direct. No reason for Boston or Montreal.

  No personal connections to either.

  No relatives.

  No known Canadian mistresses, though there was a new girlfriend in Alexandria, Virginia, who’d been dutifully reported.

  His wife had dumped him years ago—claimed she loved him but hated the hardship overseas postings that Ernie’s career offered. They’d remained friends, which was more than she’d ever managed with an ex-lover.

  So who the hell was he meeting there?

  She placed a call to the CSIS and called in a favor. They promised her an agent would be at the hospital and call her the second Ernie woke up. She didn’t even have to promise anything in return because Canadians were so goddamn polite.

  8

  Andi longed to sit copilot beside Miranda in the M2, even though she wouldn’t be of any help. She flew rotorcraft, not fixed wing. But dutybound to sit with her mother in the cabin—and a knot in her stomach at having to—made her kowtow to the inevitable.

  You’re thirty-four, Andi Wu. You can be civil to your own mother for a few days. Keep your shit together. Now, soldier. Maybe if she was still a Spec Ops pilot the order would have worked—Not!

  She entered the plane last after stowing Mother’s luggage in the rear baggage hold, then hauled up and locked the flight stairs. That placed her in the tiny aisle between Miranda and her mother, making it almost impossible to introduce them. The ceiling was four-foot-nine, which meant even she had to duck five inches.

  Feeling like a troll, she waved rearward. “Let’s sit.”

  Miranda, of course, didn’t think to step out of the open cockpit to introduce herself. Or even turn. It was the sort of social cue she never understood.

  As soon as they hit the rear pair of the four facing seats, Miranda was on the radio requesting permission to taxi.

  “She appears…preoccupied.” Mother’s tone, which could convince every member of a jury that an expert witness had lied, revealed the direness of Miranda’s offense.

  “No,” Andi surprised herself with a sudden failure of her inbred familial meekitude. “First, SeaTac doesn’t generally allow general aviation aircraft at its terminal, and they want us gone as quickly as possible. They do it as a special favor for her. Also,” Andi took a deep breath and decided she should correct the real reason head on. “She’s on the spectrum—Autism Spectrum Disorder. She would not intend or perceive rudeness. Instead, she moves to the next task.”

  “An emotionless automaton?” Mother arched one of her perfectly plucked eyebrows saying, Why am I not surprised at such a choice. Except the expression didn’t quite fit. Was Mother simply surprised and no more?

  “Not at all. She has plenty of emotions, maybe more than you or I. But they’re an overwhelming confusing whorl.”

  “And this makes me confident in her abilities as a pilot how?” Andi was stuck as a hostile witness to be attacked on the stand.

  “Because,” she no longer rose to the bait, as she couldn’t stop before she’d become a Night Stalker, “if a crisis hits, her emotions won’t overwhelm her any more than they already do. She’s the best civilian pilot I’ve ever flown with, and better than many military ones with far more training. And trust me, I’d know.”

  Curiously, that appeared to assuage Mother.

  Miranda had taxied into place. She turned the M2 onto the active runway and ran the engines up for takeoff.

  Mother’s answer was to face forward and clutch the chair arms hard enough to permanently pucker the soft leather. Andi had forgotten she hated to fly. Perhaps nerves were why she’d opened with a frontal-assault gambit.

  In a helo Andi had a terrible time relinquishing control, but in an airplane she always sat back and enjoyed the ride. Her pulse ticked up in anticipation of heading toward a new adventure, even when they were simply headed to the island. The power of a takeoff always made her smile.

  They departed SeaTac to the south, climbing hard. The leading edge of the storm had caught up with them and the rain again pattered a light staccato on the hull. During the banked turn to the north, Andi glanced out the window, and square into the face of the storm.

  She checked her watch. There should still be two more hours of daylight. But not to the north.

  The storm had slammed in, dark and heavy past anything she’d seen since moving to the Pacific Northwest and joining Miranda’s team two years ago. A brilliant flash in the heart of the storm illuminated the land below for the length of an eyeblink. Then another lightning strike and a third. Two years and she’d only seen three other thunderstorms in the Northwest—very rare here—and nothing like this.

  Andi leaned out into the aisle and looked forward. The weather radar was painted in wide patches of intense-storm purple and heavy-rain red. She considered shouting to Miranda, but she had on a dual-muff headset—and it would scare the crap out of Mother.

  Under normal conditions the jet was so small that communication inside the cabin wasn’t a problem, but the drumbeat of the rain as they reached the true stormfront overwhelmed the plane’s sound insulation. It must sound like a Dillon Aero M134 Minigun firing wide open on the outside. Inside wasn’t much quieter.

  She grabbed to release her seatbelt at the same time a gust slammed them aside. Mother screamed. Andi cursed as she tore a nail to the quick on the metal buckle, but was glad she hadn’t released it as the jet plunged and twisted.

  Seconds later, Miranda carved a turn back to the south.

  The flight smoothed out in moments. They cleared the main body of rain and Andi could overhear Miranda calmly warning the local air traffic controller of dangerous wind shear conditions approaching SeaTac.

  Andi reached over to rest a reassuring hand on Mother’s—and received five-, then ten-pincer points for her trouble as she dug her fingernails into Andi’s hand and forearm.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. We’re safe now.” She glanced out the windshield and saw that Miranda was already approaching Tacoma Narrows Airport where the weather radar painted only scattered weak-rain green. A good choice as it lay a dozen miles south of SeaTac.

  They’d be in the team hangar before the serious rain arrived there. Andi tried to remember if the team had left it clean after their last time there. It was never messy, as Miranda couldn’t tolerate that, but at times their was a degree of frantic disarray during a crash investigation that they were occasionally slow to clear up.

  Her mother’s grip didn’t ease until they were on the ground and had taxied into the hangar.

  “See? Miranda’s the best.”

  Her mother released her grip, and Andi felt the sharp tingle of blood rushing back into her arm. Mother’s face had turned to stone.

  Andi sighed. Hello, Mother. Let me introduce you to my girlfriend who just scared you half to death.

  Someone up there hated her deeply.

  9

  When the Transports Canada rep arrived shortly after sunset, he had been very efficient. Or he wanted the negative news of the plane crash gone from Lac Brome’s one beach as fast as possible.

  A fresh audience from Knowlton, which Taz still had not seen though it lay less than a kilometer away, and the surrounding area gathered to watch the action. The children of the afternoon were replaced by families and people with phones busy posting videos to social media.

  The fuel truck from Montreal arrived at the same time as an environmental team. Floodlights were set up, and in under an hour, the plane had been ringed by absorbent floats and pumped dry.

  A team from Embraer arrived. It took them little longer to remove the wings. It was awkward as one end was propped up on the beach close by the fuselage, and they had to place jackstands underwater farther along. The horizontal and vertical stabilizers were next removed from the tail until nothing but a hundred-foot-long sleek bullet of the fuselage remained.

  While a Royal Canadian Air Force CH-147 Chinook helicopter carried off each wing, a team of divers arrived. Luggage was retrieved from the partly submerged cargo area and loaded onto a waiting truck. They then repaired the door seal with a simple run of duct tape all around the seam. After that the local fire department pumped the airplane dry once more.

  Before they towed it away, Taz swept through the onboard systems and recovered several more retail-grade controllers, all wi-fi compatible.

  By the time she was done, the fuselage bobbed and rolled on the surface. Once she stepped onto the beach, a small fleet of Zodiac boats tied onto the fuselage.

  Even with the water and cargo removed, the plane’s fuselage was beyond the lifting capacity of any helicopter. So they were towing it three kilometers across the lake to where only a single row of power lines separated the main road from the water. A line crew, a pair of cranes, and an oversize flatbed truck would be meeting it there and everything would be gone by morning.